


Sam, 22

by RubyofRaven



Series: Formative Narratives [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Trans, Angst, Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Femininity, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Gender Roles, Ghosts, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Patriarchy, Protective Jessica Moore, Sad, Sad Ending, Siblings, Trans Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26919952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubyofRaven/pseuds/RubyofRaven
Summary: You may have only just turned twenty-two, but you know Jess is it for you.You love her so deeply that some moments it's hard to breathe, and you marvel at it. Before Jess you never knew it was possible to be breathless and not in pain.As you walk back to the apartment, you think:maybe, just maybe, Jess’s story could soon be real.Then Dean shows up.OrA continuation from where “Sam, I am” left off and the pilot episode ofSupernatural.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Series: Formative Narratives [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1964140
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Sam, 22

**Author's Note:**

> My charming and clever friend Ruby of Raven has kindly posted this fic on her account for me. She’s been incredibly helpful and supportive, so shout out to her! This fic is a sequel to my fic “Sam, I am,” in which Sam is male to female transgender and growing up in an intensely isolated, masculine, and patriarchal familial situation. Feel free to read this fic as is, but it will probably make more sense if you read the first one.
> 
> The main warning I would like to give is that Sam is repeatedly misgendered by some characters in this fic and struggles to address her identity with her family. Also, the ending features canonical character death and the emotional turmoil connected to it, so please be aware of that. 
> 
> Disclaimer, I do not own _Supernatural_ or any of its characters, plot events, etc.
> 
> A second disclaimer, I do not identify as transgender. I have endeavored to address, specifically, themes of transgender identity - and more broadly themes of gender - with sensitivity and respect for how complex, varied, and beautiful every person’s unique identity is. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.
> 
> MMR

There’s this story that Jess likes to tell. 

Sometimes early in the morning, when everything is peaceful and sleepy, she whispers it to you like a shared secret. 

Sometimes she recites it to you late at night, when your head is too full of legal jargon or the faces of your estranged family or half-formed memories of fire and you can’t do anything but stare at shadows and pray they don’t move. Those nights her voice feels like the only thing keeping you from getting lost in the dark.

She says, “We’ll buy overpriced white dresses. Yours will have glitter and mine will be satin. We’ll buy matching rings and walk down an aisle to _Rebel Girl_ and say vows. Mine will end in ‘forever’ and yours will end in ‘always.’”

She says, “Who cares if they won’t give two women a license? We’ll have a second wedding once you use your legal degree to win the case for people like us.” 

Your birth certificate says male and hers says female. If you wore jeans and one of Jess’s baggy flannels and if she wore your pink cardigan, no one at the courthouse would kick up a fuss if the two of you asked for a marriage license. But Jess doesn’t ask this of you, she doesn’t even mention it. Jess is one of the first people in your life to never ask you to be a boy, not once, not for one moment. You are her girlfriend, and she wants every piece of your wedding to have been a marriage between two women. 

You snuggle closer and say, “Are we ready for that commitment?”

She nudges you and says, “What, you planning to get a new girl?”

“No,” you say, “Never.”

Because you may have only just turned twenty-two, but you know Jess is it for you.

And dusk or dawn, carried in the hazy light on Jess’s steady voice, dreams don’t seem so different from reality.

\----------------------

Your last semester at Stanford is quickly coming to an end when you get your LSAT results. They’re better than you had dared hope for and Jess takes you out to celebrate. Like every evening you spend with Jess, it's lovely, _she’s_ lovely. 

And maybe you’re drunk on happiness, or maybe you’re just drunk and happy (you’d never been either combination before you’d met Jess) but you’re definitely giddy at the sight of Jess’s smile - the one that’s so real it makes her eyes crinkle up in the corners. 

You love her so deeply that some moments it's hard to breathe, and you marvel at it. Before Jess you never knew it was possible to be breathless and not in pain.

As you walk back to the apartment, you think: _maybe, just maybe, Jess’s story could soon be real._

Then Dean shows up.

\----------------------

You’ve already washed your face and started to get ready for bed when you hear the knock. Jess is showering so you’re the one to answer the door. Dean is standing there, looking so much like he had four years ago when he left you at the bus station that it aches somewhere deep in your chest.

For a moment, you feel a burst of relief at seeing him alive and whole, and then a burst of pain when he opens his mouth a second later. 

“Sammy,” he says, smirking, “Nice hair, man.”

Your hair is long and down, but your face is free of make up and your pajamas are an oversized t-shirt and baggy flannel pants. You probably look more androgynous than feminine right now. You wish Dean meant it about your hair, you wish he hadn’t called you “man.” You know Dean only knows you as a boy, but it still hits just as hard now as it did half a decade ago.

You wish Jess was out here to set him straight, but you’re alone facing the past you ran away from. You’ve played through this conversation a million times in your head but never this way, so instead of saying “I’m not a man,” you say, “It’s Sam, now.”

It’s the easier truth. The one that you don’t have to explain. The one that won’t change how your brother looks at you. That’s the thing you simultaneously want and fear most deeply.

Dean pushes past you into the apartment. “Look, we gotta talk,” he says. “Dad’s missing.”

\---------------------

You’re ready to let it go. Dad’s MO is to go off on his own and cut contact. But then you hear the voicemail and the unnatural voice beneath your father’s saying _I can never go home_. And some part of you won’t _let you_ let it go, can’t let your brother go alone. You left your brother and father once before, but the idea of doing it a second time isn’t any easier.

Not when they’re in danger and separated from even each other. 

Going back into that life, even for a short time, is daunting though. The hunting and the monsters and the “be a man” in your childhood are so mixed together you’ve never fully been able to say which parts of it you were running from most desperately when you left to make this new life at Stanford. 

Jess leaves the bathroom wrapped in her purple bathrobe, and you awkwardly introduce your girlfriend to your brother, before going into the bedroom to talk things over with her. She’s concerned when you tell her you need to leave for a few days to go help your father – and she’s frustrated when you tell her you don’t want her to come with you. 

You start packing, asking Jess for her flannels and if she still has those baggy work jeans she does home improvement projects in. She gives you a look, she knows how to read between the lines. She knows _you_ , more completely than anyone ever has.

“This is the brother who doesn’t know you’re a girl, isn’t it?” She says, “So you're just going to pretend to be a boy? Sam, you should tell him. I’ll be right there with you. If he says something stupid I’ll punch him in the mouth.” 

This, this is one of the things that Jess does that makes you feel so deeply it’s hard to find words. When you’re tired, she’s sharp. She defends you when you can’t- or won’t- defend yourself. You never ask, and she’d never expect you to. She just _does._

You’ve recently started to understand that the things that hurt you, hurt her, too. Which is why you refuse to meet her eyes when you say, “I lived as a boy for 18 years, this’ll just be a couple days – then everything can go back to normal.”

“I’ll tell him for you, then,” she says. 

“Jess, no,” you say. “ It’s my decision.”

You’ve also come to understand she will always listen to you, and really hear you. That kind of trust is still weird to you, but so, so wonderful. Even now, as she deflates a bit and says, “Sorry, you’re right. It’s just you already look so sad, and I can’t stand it.”

“It’ll be okay,” you say, “I’ll be okay. I’ll come back to you before you know it.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she says, “But if your brother says something stupid, I still might punch him.”

You laugh. “Okay,” you say, “okay.”

You finish changing into an oversized Stanford sweatshirt and your loosest pair of jeans, and tie back your hair in a loose bun. You glance in the mirror and somehow your comfiest clothes now feel smothering.

You kiss Jess, pick up your bag, and follow your brother.

At the door, Dean turns and winks at her. “Don’t worry, I’ll bring your boyfriend back in one piece,” he says. 

It’s fortunate for Dean that he turns away then, because with the look on Jess’s face and the way her fists clench you know she’s ready to knock a few teeth out. You shrug your shoulders to hide a wince and try to smile for her. She just shakes her head and pulls you in for one more kiss. Then the door is closed, the faint glow of the apartment lights leaking out around the frame, and you are left in the dark. 

You’ll be back in a few days, and you know Jess - and the life you’ve worked so hard to build with her - will be waiting for you. Everything you’ve gained will be right here where you left it.

As you turn and follow your brother down to the street, it still feels like you’re losing something, though.

\--------------------

Sitting in the impala is strange.

The rumble of the engine is comforting, it’s the lullaby you fell asleep to for most of your life, but you are also profoundly uncomfortable. And it's not the awkward silence that settled between you and Dean as soon as you pulled away from the apartment. 

You feel like your own skin doesn’t fit, it’s a feeling you thought you left behind the better part of four years ago. Sitting in this car, in masculine clothes, with your brother calling you Sammy, it feels like you are sixteen and hiding again. 

You close your eyes and try to order your thoughts. It’s been a long time since you’ve made a list, but it seems like you’re falling back into old habits fast. You’ll deal with the ghost, find your dad, return to Jess, and maybe stop by a jewelry store on the way. Three days, four max, and you’ll be home again. Three days, four max, and you’ll go back to being _you._

When you stepped onto that bus to Stanford, you told yourself you’d never go back to hiding who you are - and to the world in general you haven’t. Then Dean showed up and, well, old habits die hard and all that, you suppose.

You’re twenty-two years old, and it turns out there are some fears you still are not ready to face. 

Even though they hurt, dear god, they burn like whiskey in an open wound.

\----------------------

Soon you’re in Jericho, and there’s disappearing young men and a vengeful hitchhiking ghost.

As you stakeout the bridge with your brother the next night, you tell him that you don’t want to hunt again. You don’t want to - can’t - return to this life. He asks you why, like there’s a simple reason.

Like there’s just _one._

So to end this conversation before it strays into territory you are not ready to face, you pick the one reason that has always been the most abstract to you, but the most tangible to your father and brother.

“It won’t bring our mother back,” you say.

You don’t tell him that coming back would be losing yourself. In fact, the more time you spend with your brother, the more you’re starting to feel a bit like a ghost. Some strange resurrection of the terrified boy of the past, mixed with the stifled woman of the present.

Then you see the actual ghost fall from the bridge, before she disappears. 

You try to ignore the cynical part of your brain wondering if you’ll disappear, too, if you don’t get back to Stanford soon.

\----------------------

You drive back to town in silence and check into a hotel, trying not to wince when Dean tells the clerk he needs a room for himself and his brother. 

You settle into the room, and at some point Dean tosses out the word girl like it’s an insult. Causally, with no thought because you’ve done something or said something or looked someway he didn’t agree with. 

Dean calls you a girl, and it still amazes you how much that hurts when it’s the one thing you want him to mean the most.

Down the hall you find your father’s room, empty except for a bunch of research. And of course you argue, and of course Dean goes out to get food, and some how gets his stupid ass arrested instead. 

You end up finding the locations of the ghost’s house and grave, and then fake a 911 call so Dean can escape.

Then you’re out driving alone and the ghost appears and demands you take her home. Evidently you're so damn good at hiding even the frickin’ ghost thinks you’re a man. You get to her house and she tries to seduce you, but Jess is it for you, and besides you won’t be seduced the way a man would be. 

“I’m not interested,” you tell her. “Also, I’m a girl.”

And god, does it feel good to say that out loud again. To have someone in your immediate vicinity look at you and know. Even a homicidal hitchhiking ghost.

You don’t want to dwell on the fact that it was easier to come out to her than your brother.

She attacks, and your brother bursts in with rock salt bullets and you crash the car, and she dissipates screaming in the embrace of her childrens’ spirits. 

It might feel like more of a victory if you didn’t have to go spend the next twelve hours having everyone think you are a man.

\----------------------

Finally, you go home. To your life, to your identity, to Jess.

Dad’s still missing and you’ve resolved exactly nothing with your brother, but you are so tired. Only a few days have gone by, and you’re used to missing some sleep, but you’d made yourself forget just how exhausting it was to be who your brother and dad expected you to be. 

So you let yourself into your apartment as Dean drives away in the impala, and you content yourself with being one of the women that becomes interchangeable through a couple hundred miles and the rear window. 

You’re too tired to change clothes, much less brush your teeth. You slip into bed with Jess, careful not to wake her. For the first time in days you can breathe easy. You relax at the familiar scent of your musty apartment, and slightly too old sheets, and of Jess beside you. Her hair smells like vanilla.

You fall asleep, and with Jess near you it feels like you’re dreaming already.

Then you are startled awake, and you think: _not this nightmare again,_ and _why does the fire seem so much clearer this time?_

And it’s not a good dream or a bad dream, it's not any dream at all, and it's Jess, and she’s burning and you can’t reach her but you can’t leave her, you’ve left a lot behind in your life, but you’ll not leave her, without her its like you can’t breathe, you can’t breathe, Jess-

And then your brother is there pulling you out, pulling you _away_ and the air is finally clear but you still can’t breathe and it hurts so bad, you’ll never breathe again now that Jess is-

But you do breathe, you cough out the smoke and your diaphragm tenses and your lungs expand and oxygen is delivered to your cells. You breathe because you can’t make yourself stop. You breathe so much you start to get light-headed again, but eventually even that evens out. 

Somewhere inside the center of you you hurt in a way you can’t quite find words for, so much more than the burn of whiskey. It’s an empty cold aching sensation that fills you up.

Jess burned, and you’re cold.

And your brother, who loves you and is so bad at understanding you, finally understands enough that he pulls you away from the building and the line of fire trucks. He pulls you away like when you were children, so the fire doesn’t get you, too.

Everything goes up in flames, except you. Your dreams burn to ash and bone and don’t even have the decency to take you with them. 

You’re twenty-two and you don’t know who you are anymore, without a list or a home or Jess or dreams.

When you leave the ruins of the life you’d made at Stanford, you’re not able to say which part of it you’re running from most - Jess, or the flames, or the emptiness. You only know you can’t stay here, and Dean’s the only one offering you a way out.

You watch it all fade out of sight through the impala’s rear window and think: _this was it for me._

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is a very sad place to end the fic, but I am working on the third part of this series, and I promise things will get better.
> 
> MMR


End file.
